1.
Flirtation Walk (West Point)
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Flirtation Walk is a historic rocky foot trail at the United States Military Academy. The trail follows the shoreline of the Hudson River along the western bank, the southern trailhead starts at the edge of the Lincoln Hall parking lot and winds north along the river around Gees Point and the West Point Light. The trail turns west-northwest, passing Battery Cove, where the Great Chain was anchored during the Revolutionary War, the trail ends near the helipad of West Points North Dock. There also is a trail that descends steeply to the river level from Trophy Point. The trail varies in consistency from level and even to steep, by academy tradition, only cadets and their guests may use the trail. Visitors escorted by cadets should wear sturdy shoes, the 1934 film Flirtation Walk was named after the trail. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, cadets refer to it as Flirtie Walk, or just Flirtie. The cadet knowledge manual, known as Bugle Notes, refers to Flirtation Walk as a walk where only cadets. The trail was first used during the Revolutionary War to access the Great Chain that deterred British ships navigating the turn in the river, as it originally had a military application, this path was off limits to cadets until the 1840s. After the military purpose at West Point became obsolete, the trail was opened and encouraged to be used by cadets. As the academy grew in size in the century, more visitors began to frequent the cadets. Given the limited opportunities of the day and the lack of places for the young men of the academy to take their lady guests. The administration of the academy allowed cadets the opportunity to have some privacy with their guests. This policy is still held and signs are posted to keep visitors to the academy away from the trail. The signs read Visitors must be accompanied by a cadet, most are dedicated to cadets who died during their time at the academy. The largest and most prominent monument along the trail is Sheridan Memorial near Gees Point that is dedicated to Richard B. Sheridan Jr, who died on the gridiron of the Yale Bowl in Oct 1931. Because the Mexican War was the first war where West Point graduates played a commanding role, there is a large engraving that states MEXICO13,14 SEP1847 along Howard Road leading down to North Dock. There is also a large engraving commemorating the Battle of Saratoga on the cliffside at Kosciuszkos Garden about a mile south of Flirtie Walk
2.
Frank Borzage
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Frank Borzage was an American film director and actor, most remembered for directing 7th Heaven, Mans Castle, and The Mortal Storm. Frank Borzages father, Luigi Borzaga, was born in Ronzone in 1859, as a stonemason, he sometimes worked in Switzerland, he met his future wife, Maria Ruegg, where she worked in a silk factory. Borzaga emigrated to Hazleton, Pennsylvania in the early 1880s where he worked as a coal miner and he brought his fiancee to the United States and they married in Hazleton in 1883. Their first child, Henry, was born in 1885, the Borzaga family moved to Salt Lake City, Utah, where Frank Borzage was born in 1894, and the family remained based until 1919. The couple had fourteen children, eight of whom survived childhood, Henry, Mary Emma, Bill, Frank, Daniel, Lew, Dolly, Luigi Borzaga died in Los Angeles in a car accident in 1934, his wife Maria died of cancer in 1947. In 1912, Frank Borzage found employment as an actor in Hollywood and his directorial debut came in 1915 with the film, The Pitch o Chance. On June 7,1916, Borzage married vaudeville and film actress Lorena Rena Rogers in Los Angeles, in 1945, he married Edna Stillwell Skelton, the ex-wife of comedian Red Skelton, they were divorced in 1949. Borzage died of cancer in 1962, aged 68, and was interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, for his contributions to film, Borzage was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Borzage was a successful director throughout the 1920s but reached his peak in the late silent, absorbing visual influences from the German director F. W. He won a second Oscar for 1931s Bad Girl. to Three Comrades and his work took a turn to religiosity in such films as Green Light, Strange Cargo and The Big Fisherman. Of his later work only the film noir Moonrise has enjoyed critical acclaim. After 1948, his output was sporadic and he was the original director of Journey Beneath the Desert, but was too sick to continue, and Edgar G. Ulmer took over. Borzage was uncredited for the sequences he did direct, in 1955 and 1957, Borzage was awarded The George Eastman Award, given by George Eastman House for distinguished contribution to the art of film. Frank Borzage, the Life and Times of a Hollywood Romantic, souls Made Great Through Love and Adversity, the Film Work of Frank Borzage. Frank Borzage at the Internet Movie Database Frank Borzage at AllMovie Senses of Cinema, Great Directors Critical Database They Shoot Pictures, a Farewell to Arms – This Borzage-directed adaptation of Ernest Hemingways novel has fallen into the public domain and is available online through the Internet Archive. Frank Borzage and the Classic Hollywood Style Frank Borzage at Find a Grave Frank Borzage at Virtual History
3.
Dick Powell
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Richard Ewing Dick Powell was an American singer, actor, film producer, film director and studio head. Though he came to stardom as a comedy performer, he showed versatility. He was the first actor to portray the private detective Philip Marlowe on screen, Powell was born in Mountain View, the seat of Stone County in northern Arkansas. The family moved to Little Rock in 1914, where Powell sang in choirs and with local orchestras. Powell attended the former Little Rock College, before he started his entertainment career as a singer with the Royal Peacock Band which toured throughout the Midwest. During this time, he married Mildred Maund, a model, later, he joined the Charlie Davis Orchestra, based in Indianapolis. He recorded a number of records with Davis and on his own, Powell moved to Pittsburgh, where he found great local success as the Master of Ceremonies at the Enright Theater and the Stanley Theater. In April 1930, Warner Bros. bought Brunswick Records, which at that time owned Vocalion, Warner Bros. was sufficiently impressed by Powells singing and stage presence to offer him a film contract in 1932. He made his debut as a singing bandleader in Blessed Event. Powell desperately wanted to expand his range, but Warner Bros. would not allow him to do so, as a result, he bought his release from Warner Bros. in 1940. They did cast him in A Midsummer Nights Dream, but as Lysander, another youthful romantic character and this was to be Powells only Shakespearean role and one he did not want to play, feeling that he was completely wrong for the part. By 1944, Powell felt he was too old to play romantic leading men anymore and he lost out to Fred MacMurray, another Hollywood nice guy. MacMurrays success, however, fueled Powells resolve to pursue projects with greater range, Powell starred in the musical program Campana Serenade, which was broadcast on NBC radio and CBS radio. In 1944, Powells career changed dramatically when he was cast in the first of a series of films noir, as private detective Philip Marlowe in Murder, My Sweet, the film was a big hit, and Powell had successfully reinvented himself as a dramatic actor. He was the first actor to play Marlowe – by name – in motion pictures, later, Powell was the first actor to play Marlowe on radio, in 1944 and 1945, and on television, in a 1954 episode of Climax. Powell also played the slightly less hard-boiled detective Richard Rogue in the radio series Rogues Gallery, in 1945, Dmytryk and Powell reteamed to make the film Cornered, a gripping, post-WWII thriller that helped define the film noir style. He became a tough guy lead appearing in movies such as Johnny OClock. But in 1948, he stepped out of the type when he starred in Pitfall
4.
Ruby Keeler
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From 1928 to 1940, she was married to actor and singer Al Jolson. She retired from business in the 1940s, but made a widely publicized comeback on Broadway in 1971. Keeler was born in Dartmouth, Halifax County, Nova Scotia in 1909 to Ralph Hector and Nellie Keeler, two sisters, Helen and Gertrude, had brief performing careers. Her father was a truck driver, when Ruby was three years old, her family packed up and moved to New York City where her father could get better pay. But it was not enough, there were six children, and although Keeler was interested in taking dance lessons, the family could not afford to send her. Keeler attended St. Catherine of Siena parochial school on New Yorks East Side, the teacher saw potential in Keeler and spoke to her mother about Ruby taking lessons at her studio. During the classes, a girl she danced with told her about auditions for chorus girls, the law required professional chorus girls to be at least 16 years old, although they were only 13, they decided to lie about their ages at the audition. It was a tap audition, and there were a lot of other talented girls there, the stage was covered except for a wooden apron at the front. When it was Rubys turn to dance, she asked the director, Julian Mitchell. He did not answer, so she went ahead, walked up to the front of the stage, the director said, who said you could dance up there. And she got a job in George M. Cohans The Rise of Rosie OReilly and she was noticed by Broadway producer Charles B. Dillingham, who gave her a role in Bye, Bye, Bonnie and she then appeared in Lucky and as Mamie in The Sidewalks of New York, also produced by Dillingham. In the later show, she was seen by Flo Ziegfeld, who sent her bunch of roses and she would appear in Ziegfelds Whoopee. in 1928, the same year she married Al Jolson. The two met in Los Angeles, where Nils Granlund had sent her to assist in the campaign for The Jazz Singer. Jolson was smitten and immediately proposed, the couple married September 21,1928, in Port Chester, New York, in a private ceremony. The two sailed the following morning for a brief honeymoon before she began her tour with Whoopee and she was 19 years old and he was around 42 years old. In 1933, producer Darryl F. Zanuck cast Keeler in the Warner Bros. musical 42nd Street opposite Dick Powell, the film was a huge success due to Busby Berkeleys lavish innovative choreography. Warner gave Keeler a long-term contract and cast her in Gold Diggers of 1933, Footlight Parade, Dames, Keeler and Jolson starred together in Go Into Your Dance, which was their only film together
5.
Pat O'Brien (actor)
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William Joseph Patrick Pat OBrien was an American film actor with more than one hundred screen credits. Of Irish descent, he often played Irish and Irish-American characters and was referred to as Hollywoods Irishman in Residence in the press, one of the best-known screen actors of the 1930s and 1940s, he played priests, cops, military figures, pilots, and reporters. He is especially well-remembered for his roles in Knute Rockne, All American, Angels with Dirty Faces and he was frequently paired onscreen with Hollywood legend James Cagney. OBrien also appeared on stage and television, Pat OBrien was born in 1899 to an Irish-American Roman Catholic family in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. All four of his grandparents had come from Ireland, the OBriens were originally from County Cork. His grandfather, Patrick OBrien, for whom he was named, was an architect who was killed trying to break up a saloon fight in New York City. His mothers parents, the McGoverns, immigrated from County Galway in the west of Ireland in the mid- to late-19th century, as a child, OBrien served as an altar boy at Gesu Church, while growing up near 13th and Clybourn streets in Milwaukee. He attended Marquette Academy with fellow actor Spencer Tracy, who became a lifelong friend, during World War I, OBrien and Tracy joined the United States Navy. They both attended boot camp at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center, but the war ended before their training had finished, Jack Benny was also at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center at the same time as OBrien and Tracy. According to his autobiography, Benny performed a number on the violin at a one evening. OBrien walked on stage and whispered in his ear, For heavens sake, Ben, put down the damn fiddle, Benny stopped playing his violin and made a series of comments that got laughs from the audience. In this way, OBrien indirectly helped to start Bennys career in comedy, after the war, OBrien finished his secondary schooling at Marquette Academy and later attended Marquette University. While still at college, he decided to work as an actor. He moved to New York, where he lived for a while with Tracy, after a decade in plays on Broadway and in the New York City area, OBrien began appearing in movies in 1930. Often playing fast-talking smart alecs or romantic leads at first, he progressed to playing a string of authority figures, especially cops. His first starring role was as ace reporter Hildy Johnson in the original 1931 version of The Front Page with Adolphe Menjou, Warner Brothers hired OBrien as a contract player in 1933. He remained with the studio until 1940, when he left after a dispute over the terms of his contract renewal and he appeared with James Cagney, also under contract to Warner Brothers, in nine feature films, including Angels with Dirty Faces and Cagneys last film, Ragtime. The two originally met in 1926 and remained friends for almost six decades, after OBriens death, Cagney referred to him as his dearest friend
